A while back I discovered that you can change the sounds your computer makes when it does different things (startup, shutdown, errors, etc.) to anything you want. I decided to try something. What about using the AW opening (any 1 of the 5) as the startup sound and the AW closing (again, any 1 of the 5) for the shutoff sound? I tried it, and it's excellent!! I think you can only use Windows Media audio files, not Real Player ones.
Go to your Control Panel (from either 'Start' in the corner or go to the top menu). In the window that comes up, there should be an icon for 'Sounds' or 'Sounds and Audio Devices', click that. Another window should show with 5 top tabs, one says 'Sounds', click that. An area towards the bottom should be labeled 'Program Events'. This is a list of different things that happen in Windows, if they play a sound, and what the sound is.
Go down the pull-down list till you see 'Start Windows'. Single- (not double-) click where the word is. Below the "Program Events' area a smaller section should activate, and tell you what the name/file of the sound is, with a square button with a black arrow in it, and a 'Browse' button. If you click the square button, it will play whatever the sound is currently. To change the sound, click the 'Browse' button, to look around for another sound file you'd rather have.
You have to already have the file on your computer at this point. If you don't, go to the Internet and find a sound first. For the 'Start Windows', I used Eddie's 1975-1981 opening audio, saved it on my computer, then went thru the sound instructions above.
You do the same thing for the shutoff sound as with the startup sound, except look for 'Exit Windows' in the 'Program Events' area. Eddie has a 'rare variant' closing that plays the 1981-1987 closing, reworked with guitar and flute. I used that one for my shutoff sound.
As I don't have a working Mac computer right now, I'm not sure about changing sounds on it.
For a while, on the Desktop background, I would tile one or all the AW logos there. I've been using something else non-AW for my background of late.
See, you can play around with stuff on your computer even more than you thought.... |
